A Estrada das Missões e um “fundo territorial” para integrar (Sul do Império do Brasil, 1845-1865)

This paper discusses the state initiatives responsible for the construction of the road "Estrada das Missões", whose route corresponded to "Campos de Palmas", in the process of territorial delimitation of the Brazilian Empire, between the years 1845 (moment in which interests and actions emerged on the part of the elites of São Paulo and the central government itself, for the opening of a new transportation and communication route between the provinces of São Paulo and São Pedro do Rio Grande do Sul) and 1865 (moment of intense political dispute between the states of Paraná and Santa Catarina for the fiscal control of the "tropeirismo" activity, in the, so called, "contested lands"). We, therefore, support the idea that the road “Estrada das Missões” was an extremely important construction - not only, as highlighted by much of the historiography, a simple "alternative route" for the conduction of cattle to the mule fair in Sorocaba - in the formation of southern borders, as well as in the expansion of colonization itself in a space that was described - by nineteenth-century narratives - as "unknown wilderness". It is possible to state, therefore, that this road was strategic to concretize the pretensions of the state in terms of territorial and economic integration, since it was decisive for the affirmation of tropeirismo as one of the main economic activities developed in southern Brazil during the eighteenth century. For the writing of this article, written and cartographic documents produced in the local, regional and national spheres of power were examined. This documentation, in short, made it possible to investigate and understand the complex context - political, economic and territorial - of the existence of the Estrada das Missões.